Timmy, who was watching the black leather lout twist and dump eager partners sighed, “How fun.”

The room itself was what decorators would probably call severe. The walls and high ceilings were white, and the room itself was sparsely furnished with a few pieces of antique furniture. The only voluptuous element in the large room was the champagne-colored velvet drapes tied back with white ribbons. The two or three antique chairs had apparently been chosen for their bizarre design and not for their ability to seat anyone, for they were delicate suggestions, hints at furniture with cushions barely capable of accommodating a child. A human in such a room was expected not to rest or sit or even relax, but rather pose, thereby transforming himself into a human furnishing that would complement the decor as well as possible.

After Ignatius had studied the decor, he said to Dorian, “The only functional item in here is that phonograph, and that is obviously being misused. This is a room with no soul.” He snorted loudly, in part over the room and in part over the fact that no one in the room had even noticed him, even though he complemented the decor as well as a neon sign would have. The participants in the kickoff rally seemed much more concerned about their own private fates this evening than they were about the fate of the world. “I notice that no one in this whitened sepulcher of a room has so much as even looked at us. They haven’t even nodded to their host, whose liquor they are consuming and whose year-round air conditioning they are taxing with all of those overpowering colognes. I feel rather like an observer at a catfight.”

“Don’t worry about them. They’ve been simply dying for a good party for months. Come. You must see the decoration that I’ve made.” He took Ignatius over to the mantelpiece and showed him a bud vase containing one red, one white, and one blue rose. “Isn’t that wild? It’s better than all of that tacky crepe paper. I did buy some crepe paper, but nothing that I could do with it satisfied me.”

“This is a floral abortion,” Ignatius commented irritably and tapped the vase with his cutlass. “Dyed flowers are unnatural and perverse and, I suspect, obscene also. I can see that I am going to have my hands full with you people.”

“Oh, talk, talk, talk,” Dorian moaned. “Then let’s go into the kitchen. I want you to meet the ladies’ auxiliary.”

“Is that true? An auxiliary?” Ignatius asked greedily. “Well, I must compliment you upon your foresightedness.”

They entered the kitchen where, except for two young men who were having an emotional argument in a corner, all was quiet. Seated at a table were three women drinking from beer cans. They regarded Ignatius squarely. The one who was crushing a beer can in her hand stopped and tossed the can into a potted plant next to the sink.

“Girls,” Dorian said. The three beer girls raised a raucous Bronx cheer. “This is Ignatius Reilly, a new face.”

“Put it there, Fats,” the girl who had been crushing the can said. She grabbed Ignatius’s paw and worked it over as if it, too, were a prospect for crushing.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius screamed.

“That’s Frieda,” Dorian explained. “And they’re Betty and Liz.”

“How do you do,” Ignatius said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his smock to prevent any further handshaking. “I’m sure that you’ll be of invaluable help to our cause.”

“Where did you pick him up?” Frieda asked Dorian while her two companions studied Ignatius and nudged each other.

“Mr. Greene and I met through my mother,” Ignatius answered grandly for Dorian.

“No kidding,” Frieda said. “Your mother must be a very interesting person.”

“Hardly,” Ignatius replied.

“Well, grab yourself a beer, Tubby,” Frieda said. “I wish we had it in bottles. Betty here could open you one with her teeth. She’s got teeth like an iron claw.” Betty made an obscene gesture at Frieda. “And one of these days she’s going to get them all knocked down her fucking throat.”

Betty hit Frieda on the head with an empty can.

“You’re asking for it,” Frieda said, raising one of the kitchen chairs.

“Now stop it,” Dorian spat. “If you three can’t behave, you can just leave right now.”

“Personally,” Liz said, “we’re getting very bored just sitting here in the kitchen.”

“Yeah,” Betty screamed. She grabbed a rung of the chair that Frieda was holding over her head, and she and Frieda began wrestling for possession of it. “How come we have to sit out here?”

“Put that chair down this minute,” Dorian said.

“Yes, please,” Ignatius added. He had retreated to a corner. “Someone will be injured.”

“Like you,” Liz said. She heaved an unopened beer can at Ignatius, who ducked.

“Good heavens!” Ignatius said. “I think I shall return to the other room.”

“Beat it, bigass,” Liz said to him. “You’re using up all the air in here.”

“Girls!” Dorian was screaming at the wrestling Frieda and Betty, whose T-shirts were growing damp. They were huffing and heaving around the room with the chair, mashing each other against the wall and sink.

“Okay, cut it out,” Liz screamed at her friends. “These people are going to think you’re crude.”

She picked up another chair and got between the two contestants. Then she slammed her chair down onto the one that Frieda and Betty were wrestling over, knocking the girls aside. The two chairs rattled and clattered to the floor.

“Who told you to butt in?” Frieda demanded of Liz, grabbing her by her cropped hair.

Dorian, stumbling over the chairs, tried to push the girls back to the table, snapping, “Now sit down there and be decent.”

“This party stinks,” Betty said. “Where’s the action?”

“How come you invited us down here if all we’re gonna do is sit here in this frigging kitchen?” Frieda demanded.

“You’ll only start brawling in there. You know it. I thought it would be a neighborly thing to do to ask you down out of courtesy. I don’t want any trouble. This is the nicest party we’ve had in months.”

“Okay,” Frieda growled. “We’ll sit out here like ladies.” The girls punched one another about the arms in agreement. “After all, we’re only paying tenants. Go in there and be nice to that phony cowboy, the one that sounds like Jeanette MacDonald, the one that tried to bitch us on Chartres Street the other day.”

“He’s a very fine and friendly person,” Dorian said. “I’m sure he didn’t see you girls.”

“He saw us all right,” Betty said. “We copped him on the head.”

“I’d like to kick his superior balls in,” Liz said.

“Please,” Ignatius said importantly. “All I see about me is strife. You must close ranks and present a unified front.”

“What’s with him?” Liz asked, opening the beer can she had thrown at Ignatius. A spray of foam shot out and wet Ignatius on his distended Paradise product stomach.

“Well, I’ve had enough of this,” Ignatius said angrily.

“Good,” Frieda said. “Shove off.”

“The kitchen is our territory tonight,” Betty said. “We decide who uses it.”

“I certainly am interested in seeing the first sherry party that the auxiliary gives,” Ignatius snorted and lumbered to the door. As he was exiting, an empty beer can struck the door frame near his earring. Dorian followed him out and closed the door. “I can’t imagine how you decided to besmirch the movement by inviting those rowdies here.”

“I had to,” Dorian explained. “If you don’t invite them to a party, they break in anyway. Then they’re even worse. They’re really fun girls when they’re in a good mood, but they had some trouble with the police recently, and they’re taking it out on everyone.”

“They shall be dropped from the movement immediately!”

“Anything you say, Magyara,” Dorian sighed. “I myself feel a little sorry for the girls. They used to live in California, where they had a grand time. Then there was an incident about assaulting a bodybuilder at Muscle Beach. They had been Indian arm wrestling with the boy, or so they say, and then it seems that things got out of hand. They literally had to flee southern California and dash across the desert in that magnificent German automobile of theirs. I have given them sanctuary. In many respects they’re wonderful tenants. They guard my building better than any watchdog could. They have loads of money that they get from some aging movie queen.”